26 October, 2005

Sleep paralysis

I was reading "New Scientist" the other day and came across a letter about Sleep paralysis and realised that I have actually experienced it (at least twice)...

One of the occasions was when I was a young child, at that time living in a commune in Wimbledon in South London (where the tennis comes from)) I can't remember the start of the dream, only slowly bringing myself round because I could hear a telephone ringing, and managed to reach, I suppose about 80-90% conciousness as a result. In this state I was still *absolutely* convinced there was a telephone in the room (there wasn't really) demanding to be answered (I could *hear* it ringing, and I could see it in the shadows, but the whole room appeared to be oddly distorted, it looked more like the hall by the front door than my bedroom, but wasn't quite) and I also appeared to be floating slightly above it (although I did have a raised bed, which may account for that)...No matter what I tried I couldn't move a muscle, my body was still fully asleep and I just couldn't understand why, it was so frustrating...! According to the Wiki article on this, apparently it only really lasts for a very short space of time (like seconds), but I definitely remember it taking ages, felt like hours before I woke myself up enough to realise it was an hallucination...weird eh?

The second one was dreaming it was christmas and there were presents all over the place, but I couldn't move to pick them up to remove the wrapping...not scary at all (like the more commonly reported versions, which classically feature a feeling of threatening figures in the room, and a fear of immenent death) just a really odd experience...when I realised what was going on I was really, really dissapointed, like when you wake up thinking it's Saturday and you can have a lay in, but then the alarm goes off and you realise it's really Tuesday (or something)...

This, apparently is where Alien abduction experiences are born, in the doubt after a particularly trippy sleep paralysis episode, sometimes the hallucination can be reinforced or solidfied afterwards if a sufferer then seeks to probe the event using hypnotherapy...interesting stuff... ;)